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Topic: New Media Navigation Facility (Read 6374 times)

I have all my media files organized on a directory tree stored on a separate box. I have ~1200 video files, not to mention my MP3s (+10,000), nor my pictures. I use a MacMini with FrontRow to watch those files on one TV, and Linux MCE on my other TV. The only think I like about the Mac (and the reason I spent $500 on it) is the FrontRow application which offers an incredibly simple and smooth way to navigate thru my media files.

On the other hand LinuxMCE has EVERYTHING else that the mac is missing, including stability (the mac often crashes playing DivX videos probably because I installed an unsuported codec). The only thing is missing is a navigation facility as good as Apple's FrontRow. Currently I use the search facility, which works OK, but it takes me a while to locate the video I'm looking for.

I think a Media Navigator capable of browsing thru a directory tree would be a fantastic improvement for LinuxMCE. Is this planned?

I think I use the UI-2 (is that the nice one with blended buttons on top?), because I have the Sort button on the left hand lower corner. When I select sort by Filename, I only see:

tv_shows_0tv_shows_1

Only when I sort by Title, I see all my files, but its quite unmanageable. So I use the "Search" option under "More", but as I said in the original thread its kinda tedious.

Is it possible that sorting by Filename doesn't work for me, because the devices (they're SAMBA shares) are READONLY?

Let me know your thoughts.

Gracias,

Erasmo

then you definitely have not got your media shares working yet. In Filename sort mode, you can navigate through your file/folder structure as you would in a file server. If they were not showing up on any sort I would say you have a protocol/online/offline detection issue, but you say you see them in the Title view, so they are definitely online.

Most likely suggestions:

1 - you screwed the system up when you tinkered with the DHCP, need to be very au fait with LMCE to get back from this point - easiest to reinstall, or

2 - when it auto detected the shares (and as I think you may have added them manually, this could be the issue) it asks if you want to use the LMCE folder structure, you need to have answered yes to this....

If the latter, did you add the shares manually? If so, look in the web admin - I think there is a property there for the share device that says to use LMCE structure - I have NO idea whether you can just change that and expect it to fix it up, or whether that was something that had to be done when the share gets auto detected.

The test - look in the root of your share, if they don't exist already it will create a "public", "user_1" & "user_2" folder and a "data" folder under each of these, then video/audio/etc folders under those. If so, you are in business - move all your media to the appropriate folder, and LMCE will work properly from then ... don't worry about it too much, the inconvenience is extremely minor and transient (your Mac will be able to handle it!) but the pay off is huge, don't agonise over it, just do it!

NB: with this, as your media DB has already been populated, it will likely end up with lots of duplicates - probably best to delete everything and rescan

If not, you are going to need to delete your shares, clean up the database, re-enable DHCP and allow it to autodiscover them - and say "yes" when it asks you to use LMCE folder structure, done...

If the latter, did you add the shares manually? If so, look in the web admin - I think there is a property there for the share device that says to use LMCE structure - I have NO idea whether you can just change that and expect it to fix it up, or whether that was something that had to be done when the share gets auto detected.

It's the PK_Users item that let's you choose between "Public", "Pluto's structure", and any user names you have. Not the most obvious as the default is "Public".

Yes, I added it manually. There is a PK_USERS and it's set to public. Other values are my user name or "Pluto's Structure". If I change it to Pluto, will it alter the structure of share directory? The share is readonly.

publicpublic/datapublic/data/audiopublic/data/documentspublic/data/picturespublic/data/videosuser_1user_1/datauser_1/data/audiouser_1/data/documentsuser_1/data/picturesuser_1/data/videosIf you have multiple users, then there should be a user_N directory for each user.

For NFS shares, LMCE expects ownership to be root:public (actually 0:1002). I don't know ownership/permission requirements for samba shares as I don't use them.

If you create a writable share manually, then LMCE will create this structure on the next LMCE boot (at least I didn't find a way to trigger the creation from the web admin pages).

If your share is read only, then you should manually create the structure on your share.

As you have already guessed LMCE will not be able to create the folder structure for you (which is really the best way of proving that everything is working correctly), but in operation, UpdateMedia will not be able to write out the id3 embedded or file-based tags for all your media. These are pretty fundamental in maintaining consistency between the database and the media shares. Best not to second guess it - just make the share read/write...

I mount my shares readonly because I don't want any extra data written to them, However if you're telling me that linuxmce will only write ID tags to those files, I'm OK with it. However I don't want additional files/directories created on the shares.

in the /var/log/messages file from the server. What is it doing? I hope is creating metadata files, however find /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents | grep -i id3 on the NFS server doesn't reveal anything. Furthermore, when I go on the web interface for the share, I see Readonly checked. I have created the share twice with the same result. I'm willing to let it finish, but I don't see it creating any metadata. Any ideas?

If you told it to use the share automatically for storing things like recorded TV (when the share was auto detected) then it will also potentially use the share for that if you are recording TV. If not, then it doesn't matter - alternatively you can configure it not to use it for this purpose....

Audio files (eg mp3) will usually have an id3 tag embedded in the file itself, so you will not see the .id3 file for these. If there is already id3 tag meta-data in the audio files, then UpdateMedia will read this metadata in and write it to the database. If you add/change metadata in the database, UpdateMedia will sync this back to the id3 embedded tags in the audio files.

The most common video container formats don't support embedded metadata - there are ones that do, but because not all of them allow it, I assumed the devs thought it was better to be consistent and create a new file of the same name.id3 to hold the metadata. Same for pics, but there is also the .tnj file which holds the thumbnail for the GUI.

So for pics, it should always create the .tnj file. For pics and video, it should only create the .id3 file if there is some metadata to contain - which will either come from you entering it manually into the database through the web admin, or if it finds a match against something in Amazon for DVD rips.

So if you only have audio, very unusual DVD rips, or video files that you haven't manually created any metadata for, then it is entirely possible that you will not see any .id3 files. Try adding some attributes to a video file, and you will see one appear. Or look for .tnj if you have any pics....

And I still don't see any id3 tags. I still cant sort my media by other than "title". I only have videos on this share. All files and directories are writeable everybody.

I have reinstalled my server with 2 network cards, and I haven't messed with the DHCP settings. I get a dynamic IP address from the main server on my network (which I configured to be always the same), and pluto's dhcp runs on the second card (the installer did this automatically). Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?